MenToo(Telugu,streaming on Aha)
Rating: *
Somewhere deep inside this silly hodgepodge of misplaced activism and unrestrained rowdyism, there is a good story about what happens when men are a victims of sexual harassment. Maybe that sensitive story,some other time.
MenToo is hideously problematic from the word go.There is a lone man Aditya (Naresh Agastya) in a sales team of women who leer and sneer at him.They even check out his butt(hawwww!).Male clients don’t want to entertain Aditya’s business proposals. He is a man, you see.
Men being harassed is not an issue taken seriously in our country. This film does no service to the MenToo movement, if we can call it a movement.
The script screams for attention. But does precious little to earn our attention. The characters are all uniformly uni-dimensional: the women(except one of the hero’s mother)are bullies and vixens. The men are smirking sarcastic misogynists. They don’t pretend to be anything else.
The very dangerous premise that the film seems to flaunt is that it’s okay to for men to be misogynist since women deserve it.
The only point in the plot where writer-director Srikanth G Reddy skirts sensitivity is in showcasing the plight of Rahul(Harsha Chemadu) who is wrongly accused of sexual harassment by a jealous female colleague. Rahul loses his job, dignity and commits suicide.Life sucks.And if you are a man being taught a lesson by a woman, it sucks some more.
The problem in MenToo is not one of authenticity, but one of execution. The storytelling wears a smirk right through. The women are broad caricatures of feminism, with EVIL written on their scheming faces. A female standup comedian who has her boyfriend Sanju(Kaushik Ghantasala) by his jowls, takes great pleasure in reminding us that many of women’s problems like “men”struation have men in it .
Sanju’s girlfriend’s mal(e)treatment reminds one of Kartik Aaryan being bullied by his girl in Pyaar Ka Punchnaama which too was guilty of misogyny.But not as blatantly as this film.
Writer-director Shrikanth G Reddy pulls out all stops to demonize the female sex. In doing so the film misses one vital aspect of gender politics. It’s not women who are the villains. It’s the rules of patriarchal society that have engendered a sense of inequality between the two genders for generations.
In this reprehensible film,fun is made of women who carry pepper sprays on the streets to fob off unwanted attention. Has the director read up the rape statistics of the country before embarking on this obstreperous pilgrimage into misogyny?
In the quest of quickfix justice MenToo swerves the other way , grotesquely parodying women as predators and exploiters while the men huddle together in a bar named, “Stags Only” horsing around , abusing women and venting off steam singing and dancing until justice arrives.
If this is the solution to the lopsided gender politics of the country, then we have a lot to worry about.
